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Digester Manual
What is Digester?
The Digester program converts e-mail of the info-mac digests to hypertext format files (HTML).
The hypertext format files can be browsed through using a Web browser. If you haven't heard about the web, I really suggest you start reading something about it :-) The interactive format of the digests makes it easy to browse through the messages and download the software. You do, however, need a browser, TCP-IP (MacTCP and maybe PPP or SLIP).
Why Digester?
I started this service because I had a hard time browsing through the 180Kbytes of plain text, which is the normal format of the digest. The tedious work of copying the filenames into a batch file to retrieve the files was becoming unworkable for me. Now browsing the digest just takes a few minutes and I'm informed of the things that interest me. I hope it will be as usefull to you as it is to me.
Changes
- Digester now supports the new mime-format of the info-mac digest. The digester does not use the mime-format information, but has learned to ignore commands related to this new scheme.
- The digests have now got a 'go to previous message' button ('back' for short). The GIF file related to the button is called 'prev.gif'.
- The digester now uses a file called 'sites.asc' to read the sites which will be inserted as links to the files servers of your choice. The first line is the number of lines (sites) following below (I need this to allocate enough memory for the string array). The following lines are the format strings (C-format for fprintf). They may look a bit cryptic. If you want to insert a new site: copy the last line and change the server name. The '%s' is used to insert the path of the file. Don't forget to change the number of sites at the top of the file.
- I am working on a scheme to make it possible to order the digests piece by piece (message by message) in order to make the wait shorter. This will also make it feasible for people with a slow modem connection to make use of this service. But, this means rewriting the digester entirely and making it an interactive program (like scripts). Any suggestions are welcome.
How to use digester
You can convert your digests by doing the following:
- If you are using Eudora, select all the info-mac digest messages and save them WITHOUT 'include header and guess paragraphs' as ONE file
in the same folder as the digester.
- Start digester and fill-in the file name and if you want fancy buttons. Fancy buttons are those shown in the example. You can change them if you like.
No buttons means that normal text will be inserted instead.
You can also choose to split the digest into three files, for example:
- list of topics: IMt162-12.html
- list of programs: IMp162-12.html
- list of messages: IMm162-12.html
In case of one file: IM162-12.html
- Start Netscape or some other browser and open (command-O) the digest file (IM???-??.html or IMt???-??.html).
That's all. It may take a moment to load the issue though, so don't panic. You Mac has not hung itself up.
You may also wish to publish the digests on the Web so that more users can benefit from this service. In this case you should check out httpd for the Mac.
I have also included a standard index file for use on a server.
If you have come up with nicer buttons, please send them to me.
If you choose to present this service to a wide community (which I hope many will do), please send me your URL, so I can make a list of 'mirrors'. For many users the trip over the Atlantic ocean is a long and unbareable one. Thanks in advance,
André
If you have any questions, please e-mail me at:
A.C.vanderHam@ET.TUDelft.NL
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